Game Review - Ancient Terrible Things, actually neither Ancient, nor Terrible...

On the back of the post about Essen, I thought to review the games that I had on my list when I went there.  Some of them were things I’d been looking at for a while, some were just things that I’d seen on the boardgamegeek list and thought to take a look at.

Ancient Terrible Things I’ve had my eye on since it was a kickstarter that I just couldn’t put in on at the time (too much invested in other projects to justify the cost).  But when I found it was at Spiel, it was top of the list.

And was it ever worth it...

Ancient Terrible Things is the game of a doomed expedition up a river to the dark secrets found at the top of it.  Players take the role of one of four different characters, the Captain, Journalist, Prospector, and Heiress, as they make their way up the river to see what they find there.  There’s no difference in the characters beyond what they start with, so everyone has an equal chance to make it.

The first thing to look at is the production values of the game, and there’s no other way to describe it, but excellent.  The board and pieces have a matt finish to them which lends itself well to the nature of the game, everything being shiny wouldn’t be appropriate to a game with such a dark subject.  The dice and counters are all good and there’s enough counters to play a four player game and have spare left over. 

The mechanics of the game are simple, each turn the players start at the Riverboat (bottom of the board), and choose which one of the encounters to take a go at.  Their character token is moved to the relevant square and they take the bonus from that square which varies from square to square and will influence players decisions on what they go for. 

Then they have to take on the encounter that is on that square, encounters are drawn from a deck on the board and range in difficulty from the Green, through the Orange and the Red, being easy, moderate, and difficult.  All the easy encounters are drawn first, then the moderate, then the hard, and with good reason, which I’ll come to in a moment.

Each encounter has a victory condition in the form of a dice roll and a number or series of numbers that have to be met to eliminate the card.  Players get three rolls of the regular green dice, but must reroll all dice at the same time unless they have a feat card or piece of equipment that allows them to hold dice, roll additional dice, or reroll only a few.  If they succeed in the encounter, the encounter card goes into their stash and becomes a part of their victory points.  If they fail, the encounter goes into the rumours pile on the deck and they take one of the river tokens on the right of the board. 

The game ends when all encounters have been played through or the river runs its course to the end...

Whether the encounter is won or lost, the character then moves to the Trading post and has the option (if they have sufficient treasure cards) to buy some of the goods on offer there before play passes to the next player.  When all characters are at the trading post, everyone moves back to the riverboat and play begins again, with the character who possesses the map going first in that round.

To help them in their endeavours, the characters have four attributes that  can amass tokens at the base of their character boards, being Courage (Purple), Feats (Blue), Focus (Green), and Treasure (Yellow). 

 

Courage tokens can be used to buy your way through an encounter for the same cost as the victory points on that encounter, this may seem an easy way out, and in the early stages of the game, they can be used that way, but those using their tokens early in the game may find that they don’t have enough courage later in the game when they really want to be buying their way out of the difficult encounters.

 

At this point, courage tokens would be really useful...

Feat tokens are used to play Feats (surprisingly enough), with the cost in tokens listed at the top of each Feat card.  Feat cards are automatically replenished when they are used, but Feat tokens run down quickly as well, so sometimes holding on to them till you really need to use them is the best policy. 

Focus tokens are used to reroll single dice from the pool, one die for each token used and you can use as many tokens as you like but when they’re gone, they’re gone, and very often they’re far more useful at the end of the game.

Treasure tokens are exactly what it suggests on the tin, they’re used to buy things at the trading post, no treasure, no swag, simple... 

Five minute set up and you’re good to go on this game, it plays within an hour no matter how many players you’ve got and once you’ve got the hang of it, it plays even faster.  The feat and equipment cards make the game different every time, and there are two levels of difficulty that the game can be played at for those who want more of a challenge.  The dice mechanic is an easy one, the numbers on the cards range from one number at a certain level to rolling five of a kind on a single roll, but if you score the card, you can still do something with the dice left over as indicated below.

 

After rolling the small straight, the two dice left over could either buy two more focus tokens (Two times the bonus for a high single die) or two more feat tokens (the bonus for a pair)

This allows you to build up resources, especially when you fail the encounter and can use all the dice to amass resources, which will give you a greater chance to buy things or get the tokens needed to beat the harder encounters.

All in all I’ve played this a number of times since I got it, everyone who’s played it has enjoyed it, and while the aims remain the same, the way in which the mechanics are put together makes every game fresh, with no one particular way to win the game that can’t be defeated by other cards. 

It’s produced by a South African company called (Ironically enough for the game) Pleasant Company Games, and they’re going to be producing an expansion to it in the near future.  I met the people behind it on the stall at Spiel and they’re interesting and enthusiastic in the way that people making games should be, they’ve having other ideas and if they all turn out to be as good as this game, there’s a bright future in it for them.

The game can be found on Amazon for everyone apart from England, who can find it at

http://www.chaoscards.co.uk/board-games-c550/other-board-games-c645/ancient-terrible-things-p106987

There is a website for the game at http://www.ancientterriblethings.com/

An Englishman at Spiel...

So it’s been quiet for a week over on the blog, the longest time it’s been so since I started things way back in January.  The simple reason for this is that I’ve spent most of the last week in Germany at my first European convention...

Spiel...

And from the point of view of a convention goer and a convention organiser, it’s been one hell of an eye opener...

Everyone knows about the size of the convention, it’s supposed to be the largest of its kind, with numbers exceeding those of Gencon Indiana.  It’s impossible to get a bearing on the numbers that were in the convention this year, but I have to say that even though it’s spaced over a smaller area, there seemed to be less people attending the convention than there were at Gencon last year when I attended that.  A part of this might be the sheer amount of space given between the booths, with enough space between stands to drive a van through (and given the amount of stock on the stands, this turned out to be not only desirable, but required.  Another part of it may well be the train strike that occurred over the entire weekend, shutting off access to the line that runs directly down to the convention hall.  Those who were committed to attending the show would still have found a way to make it, but I suspect the casual trade was down significantly.

 

Pat and Lindsey at the Expo Desk

I went as part of the UK Games Expo team, so didn’t see the convention completely from the eyes of an attendee, but also as an exhibitor.  We set up our Booth in Hall 2 (of 4) and put our office together for the meetings to resolve the advance bookings for space at the Expo.  Wednesday was taken up entirely in the construction of the stand and making sure that we had everything in order for when the world descended the following day.

 

Note the negotiation settlement device at the end of the table...

Thursday arrived and the general public were allowed access to the show, a good number even without it being one of the main days, the booth saw plenty of action from both the public and the traders, and things were never quiet as traders continued to arrive and set up their own stalls.  I got a little time in the afternoon to wander around and take in the show itself before things got too busy for me to be anywhere apart from on our stand. 

  

Whenever I go to a convention other than Expo, I like to get a look in to see where we could improve things, or in some cases where we could learn the lesson before we make the mistake in the first place.

Observation One - Spiel is about Endurance...

That may not seem like much of a Observation, but when you’re putting together a convention, you need to consider the different parts of it.  While I was wandering around, what struck me most of all was that there were no place within the entire convention to sit down, relax, or take stock of what you were doing.  This is similar in a way to Gencon Indiana, but the difference here is that there are no space to play the games you buy at Spiel.  There’s no space to sit down and eat the food that’s supplied there, and there’s certainly no space to take a break from the convention before going back for a second go.  I said similar to Gencon Indiana, with the primary difference being that Gencon has mostly carpeted floors that can be sat on, and there are places to get sit down games where you can take a break from things, saving you from going back to the hotel or having to find a Cafe somewhere before you go back in for the second half. 

The overall feel of it (and I’m speaking from an attendee point of view) is that the convention is very much about going with a list of games that you want to buy, buying them, and getting out.  There were more than ten of us that went to the convention, with between a Hundred and Six Hundred Euro’s in saved up capital to buy games, none of us were there the whole four days, we got the list and then retired to comfortable spaces.  It’s just too exhausting when you don’t have any place to take a break over the course of the weekend.  I know that I’m built on the big side, like many gamers if the truth be known, and that doesn’t lend itself to spending long periods of time on the stood up and moving around stage of a convention, but many of those who were with us aren’t built on the same scale and they were having similar problems.  It’s good to get have a break out room to get away from the scrum, here the whole convention was the scrum...

Observation Two – Demonstrations

While there were no places to play the games you were buying at Spiel, there were a number of places where you could sit down to try out a game or two.  Make no mistake, most of these were set at a rapid rate to get people on to the game and then give them a round or so before seeing if they wanted to buy the game, rather than sit down, play the whole game and then consider buying it.  I found less than ten traders in the entire of the convention that let you play a larger game from start to finish, but those that were doing were getting a lot of interest. 

The only difference to this was in the kids games, where a number of the larger distributors were running continual games through the day specially catering for the new generation.  This was the only part of the convention that seemed more focussed towards the playing of games than buying them.  An interesting side note is that at many English conventions, the kids games sections are half and half, with every kid being accompanied by a parent who was watching them play.  Here, the kids were merrily by themselves, wandering from game to game as it took their fancy with no one looking for parental approval before setting to in teaching the kids the game. 

I have to say I liked that a lot, because the inherent problem with the English side of things is that there’s so many rules that you’ve got to follow to make sure that the kids are looked after and everyone is vetted and you’ve got consent to teach the kids, and here...

They just teach them...

In England, there’s hundreds of rules that we all endeavour not to follow, and I was particularly impressed as a first time visitor to Germany, that the rules aren’t written down, but by Grapthars Hammer, they’re followed, and without anyone needing to follow them up...  This may well extend to the childrens zones, everyone is so used to the rules being followed without being asked that they consider it to be normal to leave your kids to play games while you wander around a massive convention.

I’m not sure I could do it, but it was good to see that there was a lot of trust in the community.

Observation Three – Scale

It’s not just the show that’s bigger than other conventions, it’s the amount of product that’s packed into the show.  In England, most stalls have a good amount of product placed on tables that are raised to the height where you don’t have to duck down to pick something up.  At Spiel, the product was literally stacked from top to bottom, and all of it in order with regular restocks to make sure that the levels never dropped too far.  

This was the case all the way through the convention until the latter half of saturday when the stock started to finally run out.  While it’s good to see that the traders were organised and planned to sell the whole stall, it was another example that the entire point of the show was to continue selling things till they ran out.

Observation Four – Language

It’s widely accepted that most Europeans speak more than one language, particularly when it comes to the second language being English.  While that’s certainly the case in most of the larger booths, a number of the smaller traders and independents don’t speak English, so when you’re looking at the games, having access to the net and by extension the various websites like Boardgamegeek is a godsend, translations to English are available for most games and while we were there, we were offered the services of a number of professional translators who do this sort of thing on a regular basis.  

Having the presence of Boardgamegeek direct at the convention was excellent, they were very knowledgeable and friendly, and from a non-native point of view, having game experts on hand who were happy to help was a great benefit.

The food vendors all spoke sufficient English to get across the point of what you were after and how much, and the local supermarkets all have prices coming up in numbers, so the language barrier isn’t as much of a problem as you might think.  For those thinking that you need to speak to people to get anywhere, live in London for a month and you’ll be disavowed of this notion, it’s no different here.

Observation Five – Have something to do at Night

It’s not an all day convention, opening for the public at ten in the morning and closing at seven in the evening. There are no activities planned through the evening and just as there’s no organised play through the day, so there certainly isn’t any through the night.  Given that we were spending most of the day dealing with trade enquiries and public questions, the evenings were the best time for us to wind down, catch a meal, and play the games we’d bought that day while on break with those we came with.  Most of the groups coming in from outside of the area were travelling in small groups and usually retired to their hotels to do the same and that seemed to be the best way of doing things as Essen isn’t very much of a party town.  There are a number of restaurants reasonably priced with good sized portions, but you need to have something planned for the evening or the nights are going to be long.  There was some kind of motor festival on at the same time as Spiel, because there were a lot of very expensive cars out on the streets, all of them making a lot of noise till the early hours of the morning.  It could be that this was a one off, but it did make for trouble when it came to sleeping through the night.

On one of the evenings, being part of the traders group, we were invited to the trade seminar on the Friday night, which Tiny Wife and I went along to.  Excellent evening talking to other people who have been around the industry as long as I have and have similar motivations when it comes to making and playing games, but as it’s only available to the traders, that’s not much help to everyone else who comes along.

Conclusions

So what remains among all of this are my own conclusions to the show, and they are my own personal conclusions, certainly not those of Expo or any other organisation I work for, which I do feel the need to point out, because some of the things about the show I didn't like and I wouldn’t want people considering that these thoughts represent other shows which would make it sound like sour grapes. 

Spiel has the feel of a number of English Wargaming Conventions in the early part of the century, where people turned up with a long list of precisely what they wanted from the convention, they came to the con, went around the stalls that they knew they would find their want list on, and then left. They weren’t interested in socialising or playing games with people they’d never played against before, they had no interest in the things that they could find beyond what they came for, they were just interested in coming to the convention and getting their shopping list. 

Spiel for me felt very much like that, there wasn’t much talking going on beyond the conversations on the stands (and that was mostly buying and selling), people were going around small groups, talking to each other and no one else.  Most of the social interaction that I engaged in was with my own group in the evening when we all got together and compared the games that we’d picked up that day or talked about the places we’d been that hadn’t been the convention...

There were some exceptions to this, such as Paco Jean and GMS Magazine, who can always be counted upon to be interesting, even in the middle of the show when they're working...

I’ll most likely be returning next year as part of the Expo crew, but forewarned is forearmed, I’ll have my shopping list and my evenings planned, and I’ll have done a refresher course in German as well, just to be sure.  In all, it’s a good convention, well organised and laid out, plenty to see, but if you’re built like most gamers...

Take a spare pair of legs for when the first set wear out... 

Essen tomorrow, expect less updates...

And so tomorrow I'm heading for Essen and the biggest games fair in the world, while I'd love to say I'm going to be able to keep up with everyone while I'm out there, the truth of the matter is that it's not likely to be so...

But will I have some stories to tell when I get back...

So keep the lights on, and I'll be back before I can blink...

Location, Location, Location...

The flip side to adventuring is when you’re not under the ground grubbing around for coins, but out in the air, in the places where people only dream of.  I believe that more than half of any game that we ever play is enjoyable because of the scenery, no one plays because they want to go walking around Barnsley, that’s something they can do themselves, why would they want to do that in game?  People play because they want to go out to places no one’s been before, to wonderous, mythical places and see what they find there.

And so it is with me, but I always believe that the places that are so different as to be unbelievable lack a certain something when it comes to having your character run around them.  Take a look at the Labyrinth from Labyrinth, an interesting place of many different types of encounter, but when you got to the end, things got a little....

Weird...

 

And I'm not talking about Bowie's Pants, although....

Throughout the whole film, everything had been squarely rooted in things that could be possible, which for me made them all the more real, and that’s how I’ve always looked at locations when it comes to providing things for people to go running around in.

Could it be real?  Is the question that needs to be asked.

There’s plenty of inspiration out in the world, and it’s often when you look out there that you find these things, things built that probably made sense at the time, but have since been affected by time and nature in ways that were never envisaged by their creators.  Most of the time, adventurers are dealing with reasonably mundane things, so it’s important to make sure that from time to time the sense of wonder is retained, so that the whole world doesn’t seem like Search, Loot, Repeat…

For me, it’s those things that make you wonder what the creator was considering when they made it, the things that someone obviously built, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out why…

Such as completely man made islands when there’s land easily within range.

A house built in a place that would be suited to holding an emergency shelter rather than a full sized house.

Train stations that were so busy being built that they didn’t check that the trains would fit in them…

And other such places, these are the things where people were so busy proving that they could build them that they didn’t stop to ask if they should. I have impossible places in my worlds, but they’re impossible for a very good reason, and they’re very few and far between when it comes down to it.  Selvarin is known as the impossible city and takes a good number of its cues from the works of Escher, but it’s a city where an uncontrolled outbreak of magic twisted the reality within the city boundaries and continues to do so to this day.

Most places I have are simple in their nature, but the larger cities, castles, and hideouts tend to have the more mundane parts of them taken away and replaced with things that would prove unique or interesting, because if every place was built the same, the only thing you’ve got in it is different people and I know that a lot of people think that the whole of Roleplaying is about the interaction between people.  I’m not decided on that, it’s possible to involve people in a game far more when they find it interesting than when they’re just going through the motions.   

Sometimes it’s the change in circumstances that make a place interesting, a city that was built below the level of the sea that steadily sank, leaving it untouched and intact, but forever out of the reach of those who once lived there.

A Mill built in a gap between three large hills, eventually left behind because it was too difficult to move the product out and get more resources in there. 

And as with the underground things, the question is asked, what do you do with the places like this?   

Unlike the dungeons, intact buildings above ground can attract anything, because for the most part, you don’t need to have special abilities like seeing in the dark or breathing toxic air to survive down there.  You can come and go as you please, and in many cases, there’s a number of exits that you can get out of when someone does come raiding and you don’t end up barricading yourself in and hoping that they don’t have a Cave Troll…

So the question today, is what do people use for their own interesting places?

Underground, Overground...

It was some years ago that the question was posed, as the party trudged out of the dungeon loaded down with plunder, what happens to the dungeon now that it’s empty…? The immediate thought was that some other monster would move in. After all, nice solid walls, built in traps, probably water and storage areas if the dungeon had been designed in any sort of sensible way, why would you not, it’s like squatting in a premium property.

Derailed by the youngest of us who asked “Why would they want to live somewhere when we’ve just nicked everything…?”

At the time (Being twelve) I didn’t have the answer, but I never forgot the question.

Eventually, people/monsters would see that the dungeon was still there, and might have forgotten the fate of those who initially built it, together with their motivations and treasure.  In a lot of cases, the dungeon would be repopulated simply for convenience, and without any plan to make use of it in the purpose that it was originally created for.

I should point out here that the nature of building things has always been of particular interest to me, especially when it’s no longer being used as it was intended…

In England, there’s a group of people who call themselves Subterranea Brittanica, (www.subbrit.org.uk) and they dedicate themselves to the finding and investigation of places that are abandoned and have been so for some time.  I have no doubt that there’s a number of similar groups in other countries (and indeed in other worlds), as many have the interest for finding places where once people were, together with understanding why they eventually moved out of those places and moved on to other things. 

These places, including nuclear shelters, underground stations, icehouses deep underground and long disused hospitals are places on the edge of the world where it seems inconceivable that people would ever have lived.  There are the remains of a building on top of Ben Nevis, constructed many years ago as a hotel and observatory as seen here.

Now this is all that remains of it…

Would something like this, in a place as inhospitable as this, be of interest to those who have no fixed home?  Would others consider it easier to put a few coverings or bits of wood over the top of these derelict structures to make their homes rather than having to build one from scratch.  In the case of tribes of “Monsters” that find themselves continually harassed by adventurers looking to clean them out, do they ever want to set down roots and live a normal life, or have they been on the road for so long that the nomadic lifestyle is the only one that they can live with?

Does this interest in things extend to other creatures beyond the player races? Does a Kobold consider things like the stone walls and a warm fireplace or do they just like finding somewhere that’s dry?  It’s well documented that the larger and more intelligent creatures like Dragons often choose their lair carefully, ensuring that they have a place that’s well defended from attack and comfortable for them, so why not the smaller creatures?

In Quest, the new game I’m making, there’s a place on the high plains of Elevas called the Storm Vaults, where once a number of mages plotted to do something terrible but were struck down before they could complete the task.  They left the immense underground complex there for the next person to come along and chance their arm at it.  This is when my interest was rekindled in the idea of abandoned dungeons and what can be done with them. 

There’s a difference between a barrow or cairn, where there’s about enough space for someone to sleep for the night or make a small home from, and a purpose designed dungeon where there’s dozens, maybe hundreds of rooms where there could be any number of things.  When it’s a small building of less than five rooms, I have the place populated by single intelligent creatures or small numbers of wandering monsters, because there wouldn’t be sufficient space for an intelligent creature to keep themselves safe unless they rebuilt the structure and put in safeguards to prevent creatures wandering in to kill them.

I should point out that I don’t consider creatures of below “Human” intelligence to be grouped in this, they fall more into the wandering monster category and if found in a dungeon, will either be the pets of those who actually use the dungeon, or will have just wandered in there on a whim.

So why would you want to live in a place that’s been raided before…?

Ease of use can’t be discounted, and if you can find a way to reactivate all the different traps and defensive measures, it could be a very good way of keeping things secure.  The general nature of things notwithstanding of course, there’s upkeep to handle on most dungeons, and it’s unlikely that most of them would have even the basics of damp proofing to keep things dry down there.  So unless you’ve got a reasonable amount of magic, you’re not going to want to delve too deep or too far, because getting supplies down to the lower levels unless you’ve got an army would not be the way forwards.

Hence places like Moria…

Originally a mine, invaded and overrun, and then used as a home for those who had done the overrunning, albeit with none of the knowledge of the original creators of the mine, so many parts of it had fallen into disrepair. When the fellowship first came to it, they realised almost immediately that something terrible had happened, but they were forced to travel through, and in that, revealed a lot of the reason why such places are built.  In Moria, the focus was simple…

Here be Mithril…

But when you’re putting together another massive dungeon complex, there needs to be a reason similar in importance and resonance to hold the idea of the dungeon together. Hubris notwithstanding, no one goes to that much trouble if they’re only looking for a place to rest their hat, and if they’re doing it to show themselves off, the place usually has one gigantic room with everything pointing towards the head of the table, and a number of smaller rooms where the servants are allowed to go. 

When it’s a complex, there has to be a reason, and that’s where I started with the Vaults. 

The Vaults are more than they appear, the initial levels are a set of doors that open out into a staircase leading down into the vault proper, but the doors are mounted on a plain, so anyone looking for them over a distance would not immediately see them.  In the upper levels, the power levels have dropped over the years and the non-essential equipment has been laid to waste there, leading to a number of creatures coming here to escape the terrible dry winds on the Elevas Plains. There are a number of wells within the Vaults, all of them large enough to supply all the servants on the level, so water is not a problem, and as a result, a lot of the wandering animals in the area know that there is water here, which explains their presence.

Move down a level, and there’s a low level of light coming from the ceiling, not as bright as it was a long time ago when the vaults worked at full power and there were regular recharge cycles to keep them powered up, but as time has gone by, so the power has drained, and the safeguards put in place have started to drain the power from the upper levels to make sure the lower levels still operate.  It’s not dark enough that you need torches, but something with darkvision of any sort will have a distinct advantage down here, and as the very nature of the vaults keeps it dry and heated, so other creatures have found their way down here.

Down another level and the light level has increased, rather than decreased, but that means that the defensive measures built into the vault are also there.  One of these is the mage map, a device designed to change the appearance of the area below depending on who passes through it.  While the solution to the map is very simple, you need to know the solution in advance, and getting that solution is an adventure all of its own.

Down another level and we come to the vault proper, well lit from all angles and open all the way from one end of the vault to the other.  It is lined by statues of hundreds of different creatures, both humanoid and not, some with weapons and armour still upon them.  Those who failed to penetrate the vaults defences in times past would still be made use of when their attempt had failed…

Down another level and the stairs become more and more narrow till walking single file along a suspended staircase no wider than a single person, to a door suspended in the air just beyond the end of the staircase, behind this are the truths of the vault…

And that’s as much as I’ll mention here, more to follow when the adventure comes out…

The point of it all is to ensure that the dungeon has purpose, don’t just stack random monsters in there, that’s such a waste of potential, consider where the dungeon is, consider what would want to be down there.  Consider that the original plans for these things would be, if it was just a place to hold prisoners, it’ll have lots of cells, but the areas where the guards would be will be reinforced far beyond the realms of the cells themselves, and unless the prisoners were particularly skilled or able, they wouldn’t put anything beyond simple bars on the cells. 

If it was a foodstore, there’d be a butchery and a place for all the offal and offcuts to be disposed of, there’d be channels cut in the floor to let the blood run away and not foul everything.

If animals were kept in the Dungeon, there’d be housing for them, usually away from the main resting areas.

Air…

Never forget the requirement to breathe, as the dungeon goes deeper, so you need to provide some sort of ventilation to allow fresh air down into the darkness.  Otherwise the heavier elements of air (including carbon dioxide) would fall and accumulate and without a circulation system, the air down at the lower levels would be at best, foul, and at worst, toxic…

Above all, consider the places in our world where such places already exist, the massive underground city in Turkey that could have housed more than twenty thousand people, the complex tunnel systems beneath London and other cities, and then the other places where once people lived but no longer, then ask the most interesting question about it…

What happened to make everyone leave…?

I know what happened in the Storm Vaults, but I’m the only one that does, and those that venture deep into the Vaults will find that the story reveals itself the deeper they go, just as the fellowship found more than they could have feared when they travelled deep into the stone.  The creatures that had taken up residence were not the main threat, that remained far below and only came up when roused, and so is the normal way of things.  Larger creatures often keep guards to prevent them from being disturbed all the time, and so it is no different here.

The question today then, is what is the point of dungeons, and do they still have a place in the GM’s repertoire…?

Tomorrow, Overground...

A word on treasure in games...

"What do you mean all that only equated to 126 gold pieces...?"

So, having emptied out the years change jar and converted it from several kilo's of metal into useful coinage, I find that eight kilo's of assorted change equates to a little more than a hundred quid, and that led me to thinking...

What about all those adventurers, running around with this much coin in copper and silver, does it actually equate to some sort of meaningful reward when you've got to lug all this metal around, knowing it's not worth much, and then find somewhere that'll be happy to take it all, and then finally find out that you could have been working at medieval mcdonalds for more money than you've just managed to amass on the entire adventure...

Which brings me to the other point of treasure in an adventure, and the thought that for many adventurers, fortune and glory was supposed to have been the primary reason why everyone went out there and did things.  Indiana Jones notwithstanding, the point has always been to come away with more than you set out to, to do something and be rewarded for it, but as games change, so do the perspectives for which we go adventuring.

The latest sets of organised play have changes in the world order and a place in the new order as the rewards, and things like gold and goodies have taken a back seat compared to the chance to make a difference.  When we consider that many games were made just before the decade of decadence (that'd be the 80's) when the pursuit of wealth was everything, whereas now we're all aware of things in ways that people back then just weren't aware of, so the rewards for things have evolved along with our changing perspectives.

A question then, for all those reading, when you adventure, what is the reward you seek for your endeavours...?

The chance to right a wrong?
Gold and Beer?
Knowledge and advancement?
A chance to make things better?

Or something else...?

RPG Playtesting

I’ve been talking to someone today with a view to setting up something to help budding RPG designers to playtest their games and get honest feedback from a wide variety of players and GM’s. Initially we’re going to be looking at doing this from an England point of view, with specials going on at conventions backed up with local events in area’s where gaming has a strong presence and a good amount of backup.

The question he asked was if there was any requirement for this sort of thing in the world, my answer, of course, was yes, but I thought to pose it to everyone else....

Day 280 - So Alien Isolation arrived today - Required 770000, Achieved 789720

And I haven't even opened it yet...

I haven't opened it for several reasons, the first of which is that I suspect that much in the manner of Pandora's box, once opened, closing it will be troublesome.

The second of which is that the game that we started designing last thursday is really starting to take shape, I'm the last of the three of us to get the cards together for the thursday playtest, but it's going to be there, and then it's a matter of seeing if we can get the game to work from that.

In other new's, spoke to someone today about the possibility of starting up a network for playtesting RPG's in a variety of different ways, to be possibly premiered at this years Dragonmeet, anyone interested?

On why we need game balance more than John Wick thinks we do...

Good Evening, my name is John and I run conventions, lots of them.  Over the last twenty years I’ve designed a few games, but the thing I’m best known for is running games and conventions where people come to play games they like and more importantly, they come to try games out for the first time...

I read John Wick’s article on game play and balance with interest and I have to say that for the most part I don’t agree with it.

http://johnwickpresents.com/games/game-designs/chess-is-not-an-rpg-the-illusion-of-game-balance/

It works from the point of view of people who’ve been playing games for twenty years and know that if you’ve got a whole bunch of people who’ve been doing this for twenty years also, both the rules and the dice become an interesting irrelevancy because you’ve got the experience to skip over the bits that need random numbers.

And I have to say that I do agree in places, I personally don’t think that the world needs whole books full of weapons, but I’m not in the majority of people when it comes to that...

And when I thought about that, I did feel that addressing the points raised would better illustrate the direction I’m coming at it from.

 I see a lot of beginners, people literally just starting out in the hobby, people who’ve come from games just like world of warcraft and want to see what else is out there.  When these people arrive, they’ve got no idea about roleplaying, they know about the social aspect, but so far it’s been get the team and lets go raiding, we’ll have a good time along the way and in a lot of cases, we’ll have more fun because we’re playing with our friends than we will have for the kill and win factor. Never let it be said that online gaming is an unsociable activity, you’ve just got to be as passionate about it as most of us tabletop types are about pen and paper games...

What has this to do with the weapon tables?

If you’ve got nothing in common with the game that you’re trying out, you’re far more likely to leave it alone and not play it than if you see something that you know about.  When people who’ve only ever seen games on the computer come to a convention or a club for the first time, they’re taking a big step and they need to be given the support to take that step.  If you throw them in there and tell them that they don’t need to consider the weapons or the armour or anything else, then it will genuinely puzzle them because that’s not a worldview they’ve been exposed to, and you might be able to talk them around to the idea of Riddicks tea cup or Sean Connery’s thumb, but the chances are that they will look at you gone out for a while and then go find something else to do.

Roleplaying is more than just a hobby, it’s an interest, and like any other interest, you can’t just climb in the ring and think you box, you’ve got to spend some time learning how the games work, you’ve got to build the muscles your imagination has got but has never had cause to use before now, and you’ve got to start that at the bottom.

With Framework...

With Rules...

With Balance...

Roleplaying games that aren’t working on the Amber principle absolutely need balance, and it’s difficult to see that when you’ve been running games for so long that you know you can ignore every rule in the book (and frequently do in some places) to make the game run better. 

But if every game were like this...?

We’d be the last generation of Roleplayers...

Because we’re back to “Bang, you’re dead,” and other such utterances, and you may not like that weapons table, but it’s the thing letting you know that actually that’s not how the world works, and until you’ve got that knowledge down, you shouldn’t be moving off the games that have the weapon charts...

So what if the RPGA lets you make as many charisma rolls as you want, not all of us are Jolly Green Giants like me or Movie Stars like our man Wick (Love the posters by the way), and not all of us are happy with the idea of talking through things when our characters are far more adept at it than we are. 

The response here was “Then you should get better at it, and do that by roleplaying...”

I accept the idea that to get better at roleplaying, you need to roleplay, but that’s missing the point of the dice in the first place, they’re not there to dictate the world to you, they’re not there to stunt your growth as a human, like any interest, they’re there to help you.  When you start to ride a bike, you have stabilisers, when you get better, you take the stabilisers off and do it yourself...

When you start roleplaying, you have dice...

The ideal that is presented is one that you can throw away the rules that you don’t need if they don’t help you tell the story, and I keep harping on about it, but most rules do help you tell the story, they let you know if you’ve made it or not, they give you something that allows you to be challenged.

They make sure that the most fearsome PC in the world isn’t a bald berserker with a bag full of Tea cups...

Although what a concept that would be...

To the idea that you can play some RPG’s without roleplaying and not others, let me get the definition...

roleplaying game: a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices
that are consistent with the character’s motivations or further the plot of the story.

By that definition any D&D game when you pick it up as murderhobo’s is still a roleplaying game because you’re doing what your character is motivated to do, gain treasure and prestige, which has been many heroes (Conan, Indiana, Quartermain) motivations since the beginning of fantasy.  But then consider the quandary of Call of Cthulhu, wherein everyone goes mad or dies, takes a while sometimes, but it will happen...

Which character in the world ever wanted that...?

Their motivation has to be to understand the Mythos, because they know they can’t stop it, they’re gnats on a windshield, they know this from point one.  If you played CoC properly, the players would never go out there and investigate things, they’d get others to do it because they know that going out there would kill them or render them batshit crazy and either way, they can’t combat the mythos after its had its way with them...

And what makes Cthulhu interesting...?

The sanity rules...

Try playing CoC without those and see where that gets you, and as for roleplaying in CoC.  Most CoC games, both convention and homeplay, progress normally till you encounter the big bad, then you all go nuts and the screaming and shooting starts and at that point, how different is it from any other murderhobo game...?

Sure, you can play it properly with twenty year veterans and have it run as a cerebral mindf*** where everyone’s absolutely in the moment for the whole thing, but you need to have had that time, those twenty years, to do it...

So, GM’s... I ask you to get your favourite game off the shelf, get yourself a new sharpie because after John’s article, you used the last one to turn Rolemaster into a set of black paper, and ask yourself this question.

“Do those new players need this to help them understand this brave new world...?”

If they don’t, then absolutely get rid of it, start with gold pieces make experience points from first edition for this man. But if you see a point when you, all those years ago, used that rule and it made sense, then keep it, because there’s every possibility that those new players will have the same need for it.

Game Balance?  We do need it, you’re playing a roleplaying game...

Start playing it...

And when you don’t need those D20's anymore, throw them away and come see the rest of us old guys at the other end of the table...

We’ll still be there...

If you're planning on writing a million words in a year, there's some things you should be aware of...

And that's why there haven't been many updates forthcoming for the entire of it...

The problem for the most part is that there's so many other things going on that I'm having trouble keeping up with them and this at the same time.  I made a point at the beginning of the year that there would be times when I fell behind because I was so busy doing things that people relied on me for and I couldn't let them down.

I stand by that now.

Wyntercon Prep is all but done, so there shouldn't be much to engage me there, but Dragonmeet prep is only just starting up and I have Essen in a week and a half which will cost me roughly 15000 words when it comes down to it, working on the average of 3000 words a day and I'll be gone for five whole days.  There's a few free days afterwards to try and catch up on things, but it's going to be a hell of a sting.

Then there's Wyntercon, another 9000 words down for the three days there, Dragonmeet another 9000 words, so I need to be some 33000 words ahead at some point just so I can maintain the status quo on the wordcount.  Cheerfully I'm 20k ahead at this point, and that's mostly down to being invalided for two weeks in the middle of September, something I'm not anxious to repeat any time soon...

So, observations on starting the last quarter of the challenge, it's possible to do these things, but you really shouldn't have too much else on in your life if you want to have any sort of work/life balance.  I'll do a full breakdown towards the end of the year, (as in I'll breakdown what I've done, rather than have a breakdown, although....) but at this point, things aren't doing so bad.

This is John Dodd, back in the seat, and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...

Because sometimes you've just got to make a game...

Writers group tonight and things were a little down because there we all were talking about the various parts of writing and we were getting quite despondent about a bunch of things, most notably how difficult it is to get things out there and build a fan base and all the other things that you have to do, so in the manner of all good procrastinators, it was suggested to see what else we could do to brighten things up.

Someone came up with the idea of making a new game...

Cheerfully I have a kit for just this sort of occasion, this one in fact.

Various resource counters, luminous and non luminous...Check...

Multi-Coloured blank cards...Check...

1000 D6 (You never know....) Check...

Counters of all types...Check...

Actual metal to represent Treasure...Check...

And so we set about it, three hours of brainstorming and something that we feel has a good chance to go to prototyping was resolved, we're going to put it all together in the next week, so check in next thursday to see where we're at with it....

Anyone else have a game building kit they use, pictures anyone?

Adventures in Pogonotomy - Various Lush products...

The best girl in the world (that’d be my wife) recently got me a number of shaving goodies to try out, figured it was about time to put some of them to the test.  The first one in the list was Prince shaving cream, the second was the companion moisturiser to it, called Celestial.  The naming of them notwithstanding, because as with all Lush objects, it’s covered in various promotional writings and inspirational BS (such as “No Princess wants to be prickled by her Prince...” think they could have chosen better than that....), and doesn’t do much to tell you anything about the cream itself.

So, dipped in the brush and started trying to lather it up...

One tired arm later, I checked on the instructions again and found that it said to simply lather it on your face.  I suspect the word Lather to be the wrong one here...

Smear seems to be a better word, this stuff does not Lather at all, not in the way that we think of...

So, having smeared my face in the aforementioned, started shaving it off only to find that suddenly my Wilkinson blade was blunt and wouldn’t do anything.  Confused by this, I checked the razor to find that the blade was filled with the cream and the remnants of the hair it had sliced off before becoming clogged.  Unwilling to hack at my face with a fresh blade in the clip, I opened up the razor and cleaned the blade on both sides, then continued.

Half a minute later, opened up the razor, cleaned the blade on both sides, then continued...

Half a minute later, opened up the razor, cleaned the blade on both sides, then continued...

Rinse and repeat that statement a few times...

Finally, having got all the hair off (and not all that satisfactorily), went to the moisturiser and once again smeared it on, had to rub it in for a while to avoid leaving white lines all over my face...

Doesn’t feel so bad now, but there was definitely a moment of “I’m not sure about this...”

So, in summary, this stuff is probably great for cartridge razors and in fairness, that’s probably where it’s aimed at, but for those of us using real razors...?

Give it a miss...  

Before X Wing, there was Star Warriors

The success of X wing in recent times has shown how much people enjoy a good dogfight in space, but it wasn’t the first game to take on the challenge of space combat in the Star Wars Universe.

Enter Star Warriors on the left flank...

First produced back in 1987, it contained all the rules needed to play any level of conflict, from a small skirmish to a full on engagement against star destroyers.  The production values are consistent with games from the time, there were no full colour miniatures (that you hadn’t painted yourself) to play the game with, but loads of counters, including asteroids and droids to upgrade the ships with. 

It’s not hard to see that it could easily have been the precursor to the X wing that we play today, but the difference between the two (Production values notwithstanding) lies in the rules and the playing of the game.  X wing has a simple set of rules, templates for moving, cards to cover special actions and a points system that’s been tested to ensure at least some level of balance in the game.

Star Warriors was a very different game, pilots still have a skill rating, but rather than the elegant method of the higher skill getting to move late and fire early, the skill rating in Star Warriors is used to determine how many moves you can make.  It’s possible to load more actions on to your pilots than they’re likely to be able to complete, but if you, there’s every possibility that you’ll fail on one of the actions and find yourself way out of position and in serious trouble the turn after.  The game turn proceeds with each player taking a ship and carrying out its action till all the ships on the boards have had their turn. 

Firing arcs are similar to those used in X wing, but given that the game is played on a board, there’s no confusion to be had with the shooting.  Weapon damages are reduced at greater distances, but if a snub fighter gets hit by a star destroyer, you can be pretty sure that’s it’s going down in bits.

 As can be seen from the ship data sheets, it doesn’t set up at the same speed as X wing, and given the twenty five plus years distance in development, that’s to be understood.  The difference in the games is to be had in the playing of it.  X wing is very much about building combinations of ships and tactics to take on the enemy, Star Warriors has a strong element of tactics in it, but also favours occasional moves of boldness and the taking of chances to get the position on your opponent.  It doesn’t always work, but those times when the force is with you, the results can be staggering.

The basic game involves simple moving and firing, and while you could make any move that’s available in X wing, you had to be sure you had the right level of piloting skill to make it.  The advanced rules include options to use torpedoes, bombs, missiles, even the Force itself and while it took a little longer to set the game up, it was just as much fun to play.  The rules used were similar to those found in the roleplaying game by the same company, so much so that if you had a character in the rpg with ship combat skills, you could play through dogfights by just supplanting your character for the pilot that would normally be in the ship.

I like Star Warriors, maybe not as much as I like X wing, but I’m a sucker for shiny models and easy templates. I like the way you can push the models to make more dangerous moves at the risk of possibly failing them, rather than staying within very strict guidelines that your opponent will be aware of and able to anticipate. 

That said, these games are very much of a different time, and while games such as OGRE have had a resurgence in recent times, perhaps for the nostalgia factor of the games of old, it’s possible that something like Star Warriors might be popular once again.  However, given the collectable nature of X wing and the all inclusive nature of Star Warriors, it’s unlikely that any company looking to make serious money out of it would take that particular route.

Still, good to see how things change over the years...